


Body & Soul

by EveTen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Gen, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Slightly depressing, forgive me i haven't done this in a while, possible happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-28 00:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15036950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveTen/pseuds/EveTen
Summary: May Parker's life hadn't turned out the way she had imagined it would when she graduated high school.  She'd never really meant to be Parker either.  That had just kind of happened.Her life was also going to end in a way she hadn't expected.





	Body & Soul

**Author's Note:**

> So. Here I am. Haven't done this in a while so I might be a little rusty. I've seen this idea/plot around a lot and kind of wanted to play with it a bit myself. If there are any mistakes or inconsistencies, which I'm sure there are, please feel free to tell me. This hasn't been beta read and I've only proofed it a couple of times myself.
> 
> That said, I hope you enjoy.

 

May Parker had never expected to be in the position she was.

 

For years, she had never planned on getting married.  She got married.

 

For years, she had never planned on being a mother.  She became a mother.

 

For years, she had loved being both with all her mind and body and soul.

 

Then she lost her husband. Her boy, her sweet boy, lost the only father he’d ever really known.

 

He was going to lose his mother too.

 

That was what was really killing her, May thought.  Adenocarcinoma be damned.  The thought of her son, her Peter, being all alone in the world hurt her in ways she hadn’t thought possible.

 

Fuck.

 

Lung cancer.  May was never much of a smoker, besides a little marijuana when she was young, and she was barely in her forties.  That didn’t matter apparently.

 

Fuck.

 

What the hell was she supposed to do?  It was advanced as it could be, her doctor had said.  It had spread to her bones and her brain.

 

If it had been spotted earlier they could have limited the spread, her doctor had said.

 

If she had gone to a doctor earlier. If May hadn’t ignored the coughing, the pain, the dizziness and the fainting she might have better odds at survival.  She couldn’t stop working, they’d already moved apartments, and she had a super powered teenager with super metabolism to feed.  May was lucky to get two hours of sleep in three days.  Like hell she had time to go to the doctor.  The only reason she even went to her doctor was because she’d had a small, she thought, fainting spell and her boss had promised to keep her on the clock if it would get her some help.

 

May wanted to scoff.  Survival.  Survival for what? Three, maybe five, years of pain and agony if she were lucky?  Years of watching herself fade to nothing, years of seeing her son miserable?

 

She was going to die. One way or another. She’d prefer if it happened quickly and on her own terms. God, she couldn’t imagine putting Peter through nearly five years of watching her die slowly and painfully. A few months would be bad enough.

 

She had to talk about something now, think about something, that she honestly never thought she’d have to: a home for Peter once she was dead.

 

So, seated on the couch in the living room of her tiny apartment, May considered the secret that Mary Parker took to her grave and the secret that May thought she would be able to take to hers.

 

Mary Parker was a good woman and quickly became May’s best friend once they met. Richard and Mary were both older, Ben had been an unexpected addition to the Parker family, and had been married for a few years by the time that May and Ben had started dating. May and Mary told each other everything, confided in each other when the Parkerness of their husbands made them want to scream.

 

Mary Parker was a good friend and a good woman but that didn’t mean she was perfect. May had only really found that out after Richard and Mary had died.

 

They’d both been amazing scientists and researchers. May could remember thinking that, between the two of them, they seemed to know how everything in the world worked. The two would also fight constantly, seemingly always at odds, and one fight in particular stuck out in May’s mind. She couldn’t recall what the fight was even about but she knew it was the first and only time that Richard and Mary had separated. Mary went off to a conference and didn’t come back for a month. When she did come back, Mary made up with Richard quickly and soon everything had returned to normal. She had even come back in time to see Ben propose to May.

 

Then they found out she was pregnant. She’d said it was Richard’s and at the time there was no reason not to believe her.

 

Then Mary and Richard died.

 

May was left to pick up the pieces. Poor Peter was so young and so terrified. Ben was in so much grief because Richard was more like a father to Ben than an older brother, given their significant age difference. He could barely keep himself together to keep Peter distracted and happy then. So, May was the one who arranged the funeral, who went through their belongings, sold almost everything. She hadn’t minded. She was never really good with kids.

 

When she was going through Mary’s things, boxes and boxes that had been stuffed in their attic, she had found a small box with ‘For Peter’ labeled on the sides. There was a letter inside, atop some packing paper that served to separate the contents of the box, addressed to Peter. It had said that Mary was sorry she had to lie to him and everyone, that she’d felt it was better if she let everyone believe he was Richard’s son, and that she was sorry he had to find out without her if he was reading the letter. Everything he needed to find his biological father, she’d written, was in that box.

 

May couldn’t just let that go. She tried to let it be but she couldn’t just let Peter find this out all on his own one day. And, a bit more selfishly, May felt cheated that Mary hadn’t confided in her a secret this big.

 

So, she dug into the rest of the box. Peter’s birth certificate, the only thing that May removed from that box for legal reasons, was inside, with Richard Parker listed as father, along with a paternity test that very clearly stated that Richard Parker was not Peter Parker’s father. A more formal letter than the first was also included that explained the circumstances of the very brief affair that ended with Peter’s conception.

 

Anthony Stark.

 

Tony fucking Stark.

 

May hid it. What else could she do then? Approach a playboy billionaire that just announced he was a superhero that her nephew was actually his son? Peter would have been targeted from day one.

 

Who would believe her anyway?

 

Years passed and it became irrelevant. Peter was more her and Ben’s son than Richard’s and Mary’s after so long anyway.

 

Then Ben died and Tony Stark showed up at her door a few months later. May had nearly had a heart attack. Does he know, she thought, and how could he? Mary had buried it, she’d written as much, and the only proof she kept was in the box that May had hidden.

 

May had kept her panic to herself, however. She was grateful for it when Stark had explained that he was here to talk to her and Peter about the grant and internship that Peter had applied for. He didn’t normally make these sorts of house calls himself, he had told her, but Peter’s work had been outstanding and he’d wanted to speak with him personally.

 

Of course, she’d thought, Peter would apply for something this big and not tell her. He probably hadn’t wanted to worry her.

 

That was all a lie, she’d found out later, and he’d been there to recruit her nephew, his son, to fight other superheroes.

 

Maybe lying just runs in the Parker-Stark families. Even in the ones who marry in.

 

Mary lied.  May lied.  Peter lied.  Tony lied.

 

May wondered if Richard and Ben had lied about anything earth shattering and life altering like the rest of them.

 

It didn’t matter, really. Richard, Mary, and Ben were dead and she would join them soon.

 

Peter would need looking after.  He never really matured, emotionally, after his parents left him with them and then died. Ben’s death had just made him regress even more. Regardless of his status as a superhero, May knew that Peter was still just a scared boy that didn’t want anymore people to leave him.

 

And here she was being forced to leave anyway.

 

Fuck, it would tear him apart.

 

She never told anyone this, but Peter didn’t stop sleeping with her and Ben until he was 10.  He came to them at 6, alone, confused, and scared, begging for some kind of comfort.  He would get so scared at night, so terrified, that he’d come running into their room and scramble his way between them. He’d cry until they could lull him to sleep.  Eventually it just became a thing they couldn’t stop.  It broke their hearts and they couldn’t rip that comfort from him.

 

May imagined that he might do that again, after she leaves.  He might wake up, terrified and alone, in a penthouse and make a dash for Tony’s and Pepper’s room and beg to sleep between them.

 

The thought made her want to vomit.

 

She’d have to tell them about the paternity. Both of them.  Tony would have to take him, raise him.  She couldn’t let that sweet boy of hers go into a cold and unfeeling world without support.

 

She had to tell them, she knew, but the thought of it made her want to scream.  It hurt to think that she would lose her boy to someone else. The someone else would get to see him graduate, see him married, see him have kids of his own.  It hurt to think that the man that put his life endanger, encouraged Peter’s dangerous work, would be the one to see all of that.

 

But she knew that she had to do it. She did.  That didn’t make it any easier.

 

Which is why, when Peter left earlier that morning, May told Peter to make sure that Stark came up with him when he dropped him off after their work in the lab.

 

She could hear them in the hallway, it was so quite.

 

“-don’t know, kid, the repulsors would probably screw with the webbing formula too much to be effective.”

 

The door rattled as Peter unlocked it and they walked in.

 

Peter turned his head to look up at his mentor, a wide grin on his face, “Nah, not if it was encapsulated right. Then it would just be kinda like a web bullet that could take down the tougher bad guys!”

 

Tony nodded, “We can come up with some tests and see.”

 

He looked over to see May sat at the couch, “Mrs. Parker! I received your summons. How are you? Been alright?”

 

May gave the two of them a tight smile.

 

“Why don’t you two come have a seat,” she gestured at the chairs across the coffee table from her, “and we can talk.”

 

Peter had a funny look on his face, his brow furrowed and his mouth turned down into a frown.  His eyes kept shifting around the room, like he was searching for danger.

 

_“I-I can kinda sense when bad things are gonna happen, May. S-so I’m no-not in as much, uh, danger as others, ya know?”_

 

Spider sense, he called it.  Appropriate.  She was about to put them all in a lot of danger.  Hell, they’ve been in a lot of danger for a while really.

 

“Is everything alright, Aunt May? You look a little tired.”

 

Her boy looked so concerned and so earnest that it made her tear up.  God, why did she have to leave him?  Couldn’t she stay?

 

The two sat down across from her with nearly identical looks of concern.

 

May sometimes wondered why no one could see the resemblance between them. It wasn’t obvious, at first, but the more she looked at them and the more she saw them interact, the more obvious it became that they were father and son.

 

It made her want to scream sometimes.

 

May mentally gathered herself and spoke.

 

“I’ve got some news to share with the two of you.  It’s very important that you both listen to me.”

 

She took a deep breath and looked at Peter directly,

 

“Before that, though, I want you to know that I love you. So, so much.”

 

And then she began to tell them how their story really started and how it will have to end.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Don't kill me? I'm leaving this here. I might, one day, pick this storyline up again and do something with it but as of right now this is it. I've got a few other projects I'm working on that are much longer that I want to focus on. Please feel free to imagine the ending you want.
> 
> Does May die a few months later, leaving Peter with a man he really doesn't know that well that also happens to be his bio dad?
> 
> Do Tony, Bruce, and Helen work tirelessly to cure cancer and save May's and so many others' lives?
> 
> Does May decide to seek treatment and go into remission and live for several more decades?
> 
> That's up to you guys right now!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! Please feel free to leave a comment!


End file.
